Dylan Moran

After last week's episode, which worked hard for its laughter, tonight's is a far more relaxed and subtle affair. Bernard (Dylan Moran) and Manny (Bill Bailey) decide to write a children's book. Bernard's first attempt at entertaining four to six-year-olds consists of a 1,300-page saga about the relationship between an academic who survived the Stalinist purges and a daughter whose long and bitter marriage is collapsing. "You should never talk down to children," he says. The episode plays to one of the great strengths of the series - the antagonistic co-dependence that binds the main characters together. It is a wonderful return to form.

I wonder if, by any chance, they have got the casting the wrong way round. Bill Bailey, who is very good indeed, is potentially the more terrifying of the two, while Dylan Moran can do endearing lying down. God knows where the girl-next-door is supposed to fit in. Good sitcoms are usually about lifers, shackled together by celibacy, poverty, family, necessity, history, somethingy. What chain gang are these three in?

Funny. strange

Irish comedian Dylan Moran has already proved he can act in sitcoms. But now he's teamed up with Graham 'Father Ted' Linehan to write one. They both talked to Maxton Walker about the surreal result, Black Books.

Finally, an order: watch Black Books, because it's funny. Sitting alone in a room, watching a blurry nth-generation copy of this week's opening episode on tape, I was shocked to hear myself laughing out loud twice within the first five minutes.

Moran is the funniest actor on television bar none and not on it half enough. His style is relaxed to the point of dislocation. He looks as if he has wandered on to the set by accident, perhaps to read the gas meter.

How Do You Want Me? (BBC2), by Simon Nye, is delightful [...] Dylan Moran, who plays the townie, is a Perrier Award-winning stand-up comic, hence his gorgeous delivery last week of an interminable, dirty and unappreciated joke. He is new to drama and your jaw just drops when you know that. This is a first-class bit of natural acting, with double distinction in sleepy-eyed mumbling.